Joomla! is definitely a good CMS to have a website on, and if you have chosen it as your platform then it wasn’t a bad decision at all. Joomla! provides you with better hosts and a number of other benefits which are really going to take your website forward. However, if you are a new user and do not possess the knowledge about different CMSs then you must know that Joomla! Isn’t the most search engine friendly CMS available. WordPress is undoubtedly the most SEO friendly CMS and if you want your Joomla! site to be up and perform as well as any other site on WordPress will then its mandatory that you take a few steps towards making sure that your Joomla! site is optimized. These steps will ensure your site is being found by potential customers who would need your services and will be able to get in touch with you. Mentioned below are a few of the best techniques you can use to make your Joomla! site SEO friendly.
1. Make Note of the Right Server
First things first, you need to come to terms with the fact that your IIS server will not drive you to any good place. In fact, the problems you will face with the server might drive you insane with frustration as no URL writing goes well with rewrite modules which IIS server supports. Now that you know this problem persists and will persist more often you can handle, it’s a better idea to use the Apache server with mod_ rewrite and save all the trouble. This way, your SEO will take its first flight and not disappoint you. Another aspect that you need to take care of is the renaming of the .htaccess file to .htaccess -. The former is used by Joomla! as default and the change in the name will make it a much better option for your website to be found on the internet.
2. Turn On the SEF URLs And URL Writings
Before you follow this step, you need to make sure that your Joomla! The site has mod_rewrite enabled and a .htaccess file. Once you are these two are in place, now what you have to so is going to the Joomla! settings or the Joomla! Global Configuration and set the “Search Engine Friendly URLs” and “Use URL Rewriting” options to “Yes”. Once this is done, all the boundaries of your Joomla site will be removed and will improve the search engine rankings.
3. Get the JCE Editor
The better your site is managed, the more ranking you get and more people find you. To get a step closer to this idealistic scenario, install the JCE Editor which comes with features which make managing Joomla! and your life much easier. Not only does it provide you with a great interface, it also enables you to add images and image dimensions. You can even ensure that the editor doesn’t strip off the code and you can manage your site easily on your terms.
4. Removing “/images/” From robots.txt file – A Must
This is one of the most important tips you need to follow to better optimize your site. One of the strange features Joomla! possesses is the fact that it doesn’t allow search engines to show up images on the result page. Considering the fact that a high amount of traffic is image driven, you’re losing out on rankings without even committing a mistake. To prevent this from happening, all you got to do is remove the /image/ from robot.txt file which enable the search engines to search and index your image folder.
5. Redirect After Choosing .www or non-www.
This is a potential problem with optimizing Joomla as it doesn’t redirect your site to www, which is the case with WordPress. This problem can be solved by making changes in your .htaccess file manually. For the implementation, you need to make the following changes-
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
Alternatively, you can redirect to non-www. by adding this code instead:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} www.yourwebsitehere.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://yourwebsitehere.com/$1 [R=301,L]
6. Speed It Up
All of us want a site with a good speed, and it is one of the main reasons behind having a well optimized website. One of the limitations with Joomla! are that it doesn’t do the page speed but you can work that out on your own by doing a few things which will solve your problem without much effort. The first thing that you have to do is leverage browser caching, the next one would be to enable the Gzip compression and the third and the most important would be to compress images which would ultimately speed up your site.
7. Use Good Third Party Plugins
It is a fact that with new Joomla 2-5+, optimization is pretty easy. However, with the older versions, it still is a god idea to use external plugins which help in optimizing your Joomla site and making it easily searchable. Make sure the 3rd party plugins you use have a good rating and reviews, and would improve your site’s performance.
These tips will help you to optimize your Joomla! site and ensure that it is as search engine friendly as any other site on the internet.